'I should have been a Trappist monk. People were deeply resentful about me'

David Blunkett is in his office at Westminster in what seems a transitory state. He is preparing for his first backbench speech since 1988, on the education bill. There are two personal detectives in a side room, a reminder of his former cabinet status. He has just moved out of his grace-and-favour home in London after eight years. There is a large, unwrapped portrait of him by his side on the small bench where he sits, a present from a friend. He is in what he describes as a period of reflection on how a libellous story - and his errors of judgment - led to his downfall.

Yesterday, the People ran a prominent apology for a story it ran over four pages in October which alleged that he had had sex with 29-year-old estate agent Sally Anderson. The story claimed Ms Anderson had had a miscarriage and Mr Blunkett had then deserted her. The paper will also pay damages.

In an interview with the Guardian Mr Blunkett talks about how he was set up by the media and how desperate he became to expose the libel. He describes how hard it has become to trust anybody and how much he regrets he did not put "a double lock" on his personal life when he returned to the cabinet last May.

Mr Blunkett resigned from the cabinet in November over a separate story, that he had broken the ministerial code by taking up a business directorship and failing to seek the permission of the advisory committee on business interests. "I have made mistakes in the past, but when I have, I have always said so," he says.

But he says he was forced to quit because stories about his private life seemed never-ending. "A whole range of different elements came together to make a frenzy. "It contributed to the feeling that my personal life was clouding my political position and judgment," he says.

Kimberly Quinn

There had been the affair with Kimberly Quinn, and the help for Ms Quinn's nanny that led to his resignation as home secretary. And then, from last summer, a string of stories suggesting he had fallen in love with Ms Anderson. "It got to the point when friends were saying, 'You should just say it is true because she is attractive and it will get the whole issue off your back'," he says. "It felt like an interrogation of a prisoner - 'Admit it and we will let you off'. Because I would not admit it, they would not go away."

Mr Blunkett, divorced for many years, says he never wanted a relationship with Ms Anderson. "I first met her at a birthday party in June and then at a dinner. I then had dinner with her in public on three occasions. I did not do anything exceptional or improper. What is wrong with buying someone a meal when they spin you a story about having skin cancer?"

When he returned from his summer holiday, he says, she wrote and asked whether she could come and see him and bring him supper. "In fact, she ordered in some fish and chips. She stayed for an hour and a half, nothing happened, and when I said goodbye and saw her off at the front door, the Daily Mail were there. I realised it was a complete set-up," he says.

At the same time he was struggling with the Channel 4 film mocking his relationship with Ms Quinn and his blindness: "I found it extremely difficult.

"I thought the film was deeply offensive to all sides because it was a personal and private tragedy turned into a satirical film. Many people could not distinguish the fact from fiction."

Mr Blunkett was particularly angered by the story in the People which suggested he had abandoned Ms Anderson when she became pregnant. "My sons had to read that," he says. Making his only reference to his battle to see William, his son with Ms Quinn, he says: "That hurt. I have not abandoned anyone ever and at great cost to myself."

Mr Blunkett says when he resigned he decided he must not become "sour or bitter", but was determined to clear his name. "I had made a conscious decision never to go to the Press Complaints Commission any more because I had had 18 months of trying to deal with untruths through the PCC," he says. Instead, he took what he admits was the "incredibly risky" course of going to the law.

Question of integrity

"My integrity had been called into question, I was being called a liar, and I am not a liar. And I just think it is time that we stop viewing public figures as fair game. Throughout the autumn all I could hear was cash registers clinking as people made money out of me one way or another," he says.

Looking back on his return to the cabinet last May, Mr Blunkett says: "I should have been a Trappist monk. I should have seen that people were deeply resentful that I had come back so quickly ... I should have had a double lock on myself and realised that it was necessary to close everything down except the work ethic."

The betrayal has, he says, made his private life "impossible" to conduct. "I have learned a very severe lesson that I have to presume the worst, yet I have to get on and restore my sense of humour and myself," he says.

He makes one last reflection. He says if he had not been blind, he might have seen the trick being played upon him by Ms Anderson. "If I am honest I over-compensated for not being able to see by setting it aside and not allowing it ever to impinge on my psyche. I could never afford to take a look and be honest with myself. You could never, ever afford to reveal that achilles heel, but I can afford to do that now."